10 comments:

GrueBleen
said...

The sky is falling ! The sky is falling !

Some nice scare tactics by Nick 'The Man Whose Aggrandised Ambitions Destroyed the LIB/Dems' Clegg. And probably substantially correct too. So, basically, the long slow slide into irrelevancy and eventually oblivion of the once Superpower that was Great Britain will get a bit of a rapid kick along.

I'll watch with interest how far the English economy (as measured by exchange valuation GDP) from its current 5th place in the world to when it falls behind the presently 12th placed economy.

I no longer live in the UK, and like most never thought Leave would really happen - it was unthinkable.

In particular, I had no awareness that the Scots would vote en masse for the EU. It seems to me now the Scots if they vote again will leave; if they feel anything like me, being involuntarily removed from the EU is impossible and being part of the UK does not, in any even vaguely remote way, compensate for this!

I am of the view that for decisions such as this, where the effects are so profound, a simple majority is inappropriate.

The problem now of course is the uncertainty, and that the uncertainty will last for a long time. It is an unbelieveable situation, and indeed if the country was serious about leaving, I see no reason why the terms of leaving could not have been worked out beforehand and *then* presented to the country for referendum.

It seems to me the Leave campaign has offered a fantasy, for they have no idea how departure will play out; and the very offering of the referendum in the way it was done, by the Government, was improper - it seems to me it was done on the assumption Remain would win and in doing so would provide a mandate.

As an aside, I believe I am one of the lucky ones - I think I have an Irish grandparent. I am now beginning the process of claiming Irish citizenship.

This will allow me to reclaim my EU citizenship. I am in fact a citizen of the EU, not the UK; I had till I realised my ancestry been facing deportation (not quite literal - I'm sure anyone holding a job would keep it; but I would most likely come not to be a citizen on equal terms, and besides, the uncertain would hinder my access to the job market).

I would in fact like to see a separate EU citizenship, independent of national citizenship, so those countries which wish to leave do not inflict themselves upon their people.

So Clegg's logic seems to be that if you are in an unhappy, abusive and unloving marriage you should stay put because what lies beyond is unknown and therefore should not be risked? Better off staying miserable with the devil you know? No thanks.

It's all part of a Machiavellian plan: Scotland gets independence and boatloads of EU money for welfare (instead of the Greece treatment), while Austerity George squeezes England's lower social classes "until the pips squeak", vote for Nick Clegg, and get led back into the EU under the most humiliating terms. ;-)

There was overwhelming expert opinion that leaving the EU would be a bad idea; unfortunately, the UK agreed with one of the architects of the Leave campaign (Michael Gove, now trying to become PM) that 'this country has had enough of experts'. The experts now appear to have been correct. Funny that. The arguments in favour of Leaving were either on a totally abstract level without any engagement with reality, or they were lies. There is very strong evidence that the leader of the Leave campaign (Boris Johnson) didn't really want to leave the EU and didn't want to win the campaign, he just wanted to weaken David Cameron to become PM himself. He spent the last week away from the cameras because he didn't know what to do. How can such cynicism can one man get away with?

There is almost no way this can work out well for the UK. For one thing, I read that the UK has very few expert trade negotiators. How can we negotiate with the EU and other nations with such a constraint? Anything you may have read on this referendum result from a left wing or 'alt-right' perspective is rubbish. They say the result is a rejection of neoliberalism or globalist elites, but that was not on the ballot paper. It was a vote to leave the EU. People may be angry with austerity, but the culprit wasn't the EU, it was Westminster.

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